"FoodStyling" news and stories

For all you budding foodporn snappers - how about a holiday (sorry, vacation) in Tuscany taking pics of food.

Still Life With... alerted us to the details - 5 nights and 4 days at il Bareto, in the hills, 14 kilometers southwest of Siena. Each day a different aspect of food photography and cooking is covered. The course is run by Ignacio Urquiza (aka Nacho) is an established photographer, and has published over 60 books, including several award winning cookbooks. They have been running photography workshops since 2003. Just look at the superb photos in the brochure, if you end up taking pictures as good as these it has to be money well spent.

Sadly I wont be going. The cost is just too much for a lowly scribbler. The week costs $2950 not including flight.

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I have just been flicking through the August issue of Olive and ran across an interesting snippet of info from Gordon Ramsey. He writes a regular column Ramsey's Rant and this month covers the look and presentation of food. As well as being of interest to the dinner party entertainment crowd I also thought the points were of interest to the budding food photographer.

The key to food presentation is to keep it simple and not make the dish appear to have been prodded by 16 different people.

Food Presentation Dos

• keep it clean and simple
• use odd number of ingredients on the plate
• add hot sauces right at the end
• visualise what a dish will look like before arranging it on the plate
• cut things in half if they look too big

Food Preparation Dont's

• use herb garnishes unless they go with the dish
• go for looks rather than flavour
• clutter the plate
• serve the food cold because you spent too long dressing it
• move things around the plate once you have put them down, this will just make a mess

Ramsey also suggests imagining the plate as a clock face. Hot food tends to be served with the meat or fish at 6 o'clock (ie near the base of the dish) with other ingredients at three and nine. For cold food the main ingredient is usually put in the middle with the rest dotted around it. A presentation ring helps for getting some height.

The picture here was submitted to the Slashfood Flickr group by by Posies Place

Aussie based Tomatom has just posted the results from the hotly contested Does My Blog Look Good In This photo competition. Ignoring the fact that two winning entries came from the same person (the rules state just one entry per person/blog per month) the standard of entries was really great for this round. Ed has posted a spreadsheet of the results with comments from the two judges - Terry Durack (restaurant reviewer for The Independent on Sunday in London and European editor of Gourmet Traveller) and Jill Dupleix (The Times cook in London).

The winning photo really is excellent, I hope you agree. It was entered by Lucullian Delights. The next round, now accepting entries, is being hosted by Nika's Culinaria.

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